Chapter 23: Six Hours
Last time, we left the magical realm of Kishkindha, with the Golden Fruit/golden fruit, and got back to the real world in Hampi. Kelsey and Ren are still arguing on and off, and both of them became reprehensible characters--Kelsey for leading Ren on with the full intention of breaking it off later, and Ren for forcing Kelsey to kiss him despite the fact that she clearly didn't want to. I love that these are our protagonists!
Chapter Twenty-Three: Six Hours
Nothing happens in this chapter. Kelsey talks to Mr. Kadam for a while, and then Ren and Kelsey have dinner. This takes twenty-three pages (on Kindle, at least).
When they leave the staircase, it's early dawn. If we go back to see what time it was when they left Hampi a few chapters ago, it was almost dawn then, too, which means that time didn't pass outside. Which at least assuages my fears that security guards would find the magic staircase while they were down there. There is absolutely zero mention of the staircase disappearing and the statue going back to normal as they leave, which means that it's entirely possible that people will be able to find a portal to a magical pocket dimension after they leave.
I must have started walking down the wrong path because he trotted ahead, pointedly moving in a different direction. I muttered, "Show-off. I'll walk the wrong way if I want to." But, I still followed after him.
On its face, this doesn't seem to be all that bad. Sure, it shows how Kelsey is petty and annoying, but that's more of a problem with her character. Right?
Well, this shows a major problem I have with YA paranormal romance, and badly-written romance as a whole. So many protagonists are written as very strong-willed, confident women who aren't afraid to speak their mind. That's what Kelsey's doing here (or trying to, at least). Then the Designated Love Interest, a strong manly man, also very strong-willed, disagrees with the protagonist. The main character complains, but then also always goes along with whatever the love interest wants.
This happens in Twilight (Bella wants to be a vampire but Edward says no, for example). This happens in A Discovery of Witches (which I tried to get into but hated for this exact reason). This constantly happens in Tiger's Curse because Kelsey is helpless and her brain doesn't work so good.
It's like the author is paying lip service to the main character's informed trait of "confident and self-assured," and then just completely ignores that because the love interest...what? Knows better? Is superior to the main character? I have no idea.
Let your main character make a mistake! Let your main character act in a way that the love interest doesn't want! It creates better conflict between characters! Let them make wrong choices against the advice of the love interest! Or, even better, let them be right! The way these character interactions go, these characters don't have agency over what they're doing. They're constantly strong-armed into doing what they don't want to do, but it's okay because they're not happy about it while they're doing it.
I hate it.
Kelsey and Ren get back to Mr. Kadam's camp, and he's happy to see them. Instead of instantly saying, "Hey, we got the MacGuffin we were supposed to get," Kelsey starts complaining about the monkeys and kappas and needle trees. Which, yeah, I'd probably complain about those too at some point, but why wouldn't the first thing you said be that the mission was successful?
Mr. Kadam is surprised that they've been gone for a few days, and says that he was about to tell them that they could try again tomorrow. Thanks for reminding me about the lack of stakes in this story, Mr. Kadam.
Ren appeared to be sweet and attentive, as harmless as a little kitten. He was about as harmless as a Kappa.
I'll remind you all again that the butterfly metaphor that was supposed to foreshadow this was backwards, and the symbolism there was that Ren was harmless and was blending in with poisonous things as a disguise, which is the exact opposite of what is being portrayed here.
Kelsey pulls the Golden Fruit out of her backpack to show to Mr. Kadam, and repeats Ren's analysis of why it's a mango just to be obnoxious. Mr. Kadam is happy and offers to get a hotel before they drive home, which will take a couple of days. Kelsey asks for a fancy hotel far away from the jungle because she doesn't want to have to deal with Ren. She rubs it in his face for extra "bitch" points.
Kelsey's narration still refers to Ren as "my tiger" despite the fact that she doesn't like him very much right now, which doesn't make sense. He licks her face as he jumps in the car (again--tiger tongues are used to strip flesh from bones), which is not cool because he knows she's not into it. Ren sucks too.
Kelsey is so mad at Ren that when Mr. Kadam asks her to explain what happened, she lies and says that she wants to sleep instead. She does end up sleeping, so I'm not sure why that's a lie?
When she wakes up, Mr. Kadam gives her some food (a sandwich, soda, and a banana), and Kelsey immediately thinks about annoying Ren with monkey jokes because of the banana. So now, instead of only reacting to Ren, Kelsey is seeking out opportunities to be mean to him. This is our protagonist. She's somehow getting worse.
She's totally find with explaining what happened now, though, which makes the previous exchange pretty pointless. She talks for about two hours (!) and gets through describing the tree and ends with the kappa attack. She never mentions that Ren was human the whole time they were in Kishkindha, and whenever Mr. Kadam asks how something was done she credits it to the gada or Fanindra. Which isn't even lying! Fanindra did all of the hard work, helping them find where they were supposed to go and then rescuing Kelsey!
Mr. Kadam said we'd be stopping at a hotel soon, but he wanted to find a good place to leave Ren first. I demurred, "Of course," and smiled a sickly sweet smile back at the attentive tiger.
Jeez, so much. Kelsey is still being very mean for no reason. Kelsey smiles a smile back at Ren, which is terribly worded and redundant. And I think Houck is trying to use the word "demure" as a verb, because "demure" means reserved or modest. BUT, "demurred" is an entirely different word. "Demurred" means to put forward a disagreement in reservation of something. It's also a legal term that's similar to an objection. So it makes no sense to disagree with something by saying "of course." It's the wrong word, plain and simple.
Mr. Kadam says that he hopes the jungle won't be too far away from the hotel.
I patted Mr. Kadam's arm and reassured him, "Oh, don't worry about him. He's very good at getting what he wants. I mean . . . taking care of his needs."
Truer words have never been spoken.
They drop Ren off, and as they start driving away, Mr. Kadam asks Kelsey if she's alright. As someone who's not a main character, Mr. Kadam is allowed to have a functioning brain and seems to have clued into the fact that Kelsey isn't particularly thrilled with Ren at the moment.
Mr. Kadam drops the subject and asks if she's had any sort of weird dream relating to her Matt Damon amulet.
"Oh! I totally forgot to tell you! When I plucked the fruit, I fainted and had a vision. It was of you, me, and some evil guy."
Glad to see that the small amount of interaction with our antagonist is so unimportant that our protagonist completely forgot about it. Also, just the fact that our antagonist can just be summed up as "some evil guy" pains me to no end.
Mr. Kadam decides to exposit about the antagonist. We get to hear his name--Lokesh. Oh, hey, they guy from the prologue! It's not really a twist since it's pretty obvious. He is described as a "dark wizard," though, which is pretty awesome. I'm not sure if this is just a weird choice of words or if we're just now deciding to throw wizards as a class of magic-users into the book when we're a couple of chapters from the end.
We are on page 431 out of 502, at a cool 82% of the way through the story. This is completely insane pacing.
Obviously it's possible for an antagonist to physically only show up at the end of a story--that's how mysteries work, as it would be pretty dumb for an antagonist to visibly be an antagonist right at the beginning if his identity is supposed to be a surprise or a secret. The whole point is that an antagonist's actions, if not his physical presence, cast a noticeable shadow over the events of the book. The protagonist has to struggle, and that means that she has to struggle against something. In a murder mystery, the protagonist has to piece together who the antagonist is when she finds a dead body that exists because of the antagonist; she's placed into a battle of wits against a mysterious opponent that tries to keep her from finding out what happened. In a romance, the antagonist tries to keep her and her love interest apart. In an adventure story, the antagonist tries to keep the protagonist from getting to the MacGuffin.
In broad strokes, anyway.
In Harry Potter, Voldemort isn't physically present (on-screen, anyway) until the last couple of chapters/scenes in Sorcerer's Stone. But his actions influence everything that happens in the first book, even before people realize that he's still alive. His basic backstory--that he killed Lily and James, and was the leader of the bad guys in a massive wizarding war--is given in chapter 4 of Sorcerer's Stone, 50 pages into the story, at about 18% of the way through (according to Kindle). After this--and even before, to an extent--most characters' actions directly result from Voldemort as an antagonist. Harry is bullied by Snape, there's an entire subplot about the fact that one of the teachers is working for Voldemort and the main trio thinking that it's Snape, and the entire plot of the first book is Harry trying to keep Voldemort from getting the Sorcerer's Stone from Hogwarts. If no one talked about Voldemort until the very end, and Harry didn't know who he was until he talked to Dumbledore at the very end, it wouldn't make any sense!
In Sorcerer's Stone, we get a basic introduction to Voldemort and why he matters at about this point:
They drive back to where they dropped off Ren, and Kelsey stays in the car so she doesn't have to deal with him. Ren says something to him, and Mr. Kadam laughs and claps him on the back. What could it mean??
Kelsey ignores Ren as they drive all day, and Mr. Kadam says that they have one more hotel stop before they get back to Ren's jungle mansion. He says that they'll have dinner at a restaurant that night, and leaves Kelsey to relax. As she stresses out about what to wear to dinner, a maid knocks on the door and gives her a box that she says is from Mr. Kadam.
There's a dress inside! Dress porn!
The fitted black velvet bodice had a sweetheart neckline, and the capped sleeves and skirt were made of a pearlescent plum dupioni silk. The dress's snug fit made me look curvier than I really was. It tapered down to my hips and settled over the full plum, knee-length skirt. A belt, made of the same material as the skirt, and was knotted on the side and pinned with a sparkling broach to emphasize the size of my waist.
That should be "brooch," not "broach," by the way. Two editors. Ugh.
Kelsey finishes getting ready until Mr. Kadam shows up, and says that she looks beautiful. They walk to the restaurant for dinner, but all of the tables are empty except for one. I wonder who it could be??
Mr. Kadam bows to Kelsey and says that he's leaving her alone to eat with her dining companion.
Dining companion? What is he talking about? Maybe he's confused.
Oh, Kelsey's poor brain. It's doing its best.
Yeah, it's obvious who it is. Ren's sitting at the table.
He was dressed in an elegant black suit and he'd had his hair cut. Glossy black hair was swept back away from his face in tousled layers that tapered to a slight curl at the nape of his neck. The white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the collar. It set off his golden-bronze skin and his brilliant white smile, making him positively lethal to any woman who might cross his path.
He's hawt.
He checks her out over the course of a couple of paragraphs (although we are spared a description of him staring at her boobs, which does unquestionably happen).
Kelsey asks if he's about done yet, and Ren is annoying.
His eyes drifted leisurely back up to my face and he smiled at me appreciatively, "Kelsey, when a man spends time with a beautiful woman, he needs to pace himself."
I quirked my eyebrow at him and laughed. "Yeah. I'm a regular marathon, alright."
What does that even mean.
He kissed my fingers. "Exactly. A wise man never sprints . . . in a marathon."
Um, you sprint at the end. That's the point. You conserve energy during the run so you can go all-out at the end. Also, why are there ellipses? They don't really do anything, and I'm not sure if the joke is about the "not sprinting" part or the "in a marathon" part.
"I was being sarcastic, Ren."
Thanks for pointing that out I didn't notice that you were being sarcastic when you were clearly being sarcastic, I'm just an idiotic reader who doesn't pick up on obvious context clues.
He pulls out a chair for her, and she thinks about running away. This is not a great interaction between your love interests at the end of the book.
He leaned in close and whispered in my ear, "I know what you're thinking, and I'm not going to let you escape again. You can either take a seat and have dinner with me like a normal date," he grinned at his word choice, "or," he paused thoughtfully then threatened, "you can sit on my lap while I force-feed you."
OOF that grammar. All capitalization and commas appear exactly how they do in the Kindle version (and the physical copy as well, I think), and they are not good. You can't grin a sentence, which means that "date" should be followed by a period or a dash to indicate that the dialogue is being broken up with an action. Same with "he paused thoughtfully," as you can't pause the word "or." There should be a comma after the word "thoughtfully." Since "pause" isn't a dialogue tag, but an action, the word "you" should also be capitalized.
Two editors.
Also, yikes, Ren is scary.
I hissed, "You wouldn't dare. You're too much of a gentleman to force me to do anything. It's an empty bluff, Mr. Asks-For-Permission."
Um, HELLO? Literally, in the last chapter, when he kissed you when he very much did not have your permission? I complained a lot about it!
I unceremoniously plunked down in my chair and scooted noisily to the table.
I actually like this, since it does a good job of showing that Kelsey is unwillingly going along with things but isn't happy about it without telling us outright over and over again.
The waitress shows up and blatantly flirts with Ren, which makes Kelsey annoyed. Dude, you have to pick a side. Either you are into Ren and are jealous when other girls interact with him, or you are deciding not to be into him, in which case you have no right to be annoyed when he acts romantically with other people. Now, it could work if she felt guilty for feeling jealous, as that kind of inner conflict would actually make sense, but it just comes off as really hypocritical.
Ren orders food and Kelsey says that he'd better hurry up since his time is almost up. He doesn't seem too worried about it.
"Fine. No skin off my nose. I can't wait to see what happens when a white tiger runs through this nice establishment creating mayhem and havoc. Perhaps they will lose one of their stars because they put their patrons in danger. Maybe your new waitress girlfriend will run away screaming." I smiled at the thought.
BEEP BOOP I TALK LIKE REAL HU-MAN
Ren winks at the waitress to be obnoxious.
When Kelsey mentions again that he's running out of time, he says that they don't have to worry about it. Turns out that by fulfilling the first part of Durga's prophecy, they lifted the curse. Well, part of it, since now he can be human for six hours out of the day, versus the twenty-four minutes he was stuck with before.
Kelsey says that it makes sense--there were four sides to the obelisk that has Durga's prophecy was written on, and four times six is twenty-four.
Uhh, so why did he have twenty-four minutes before, though? This doesn't explain that.
Kelsey says that she probably isn't necessary for the other tasks, since Ren and Kishan can probably take care of the others now that they're humans for more of the day.
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at me. "Don't underestimate your level of . . . involvement, Kelsey. Even if you weren't needed anymore to break the curse, do you think I'd simply let you go? Let you walk out of my life without a backward glance?"
Hi, that's called kidnapping. Oh, wait, that's how she got here in the first place.
This book is troubling.
"The answer to that question is . . . I won't. You belong with me. Which leads me to the discussion I wanted to have with you."
"Where I belong is for me to decide, and though I will listen to what you have to say, that doesn't mean I will agree with you."
"Fair enough." Ren pushed his empty plate to the side. "We have some unfinished business to take care of."
Fair enough? Fair enough? I hate Ren.
Kelsey thinks that Ren is talking about the other tasks they have to complete (lol no, that's for the next book, Kelsey), but Ren wants to talk about their relationship. Now you're making me side with the creep, Kelsey, thanks.
There's some back and forth for an entire page of Ren telling Kelsey that she has feelings for him, while Kelsey denies it. The waitress comes back and Ren gives her his card to pay for dinner. He says something to her, and she giggles.
When she left, I narrowed my eyes at him and asked, "How did you get that card, and what were you saying to her about me?"
"Mr. Kadam gave me the card, and I told her that we would be having our dessert . . . later."
I laughed facetiously. "You mean you will be having dessert later by yourself this evening because I am done eating with you."
He leaned across the table and said, "Who said anything about eating, Kelsey?"
O_O
I get that this is a YA book, but this is a just-not-quite explicit reference to sex in a novel where the most extreme curse word is "gads" and where the most romantically-charged thing is kissing.
He physically drags her back to their hotel (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and he leaves her at the door to her room. He says that he has a room on the same floor.
He whispered warmly, "I can always tell where you are, Kelsey. You smell like peaches and cream."
RUN AWAY!!!!
He kisses her again, and it lasts another page.
With a devastating smile, he reluctantly pulled away and lightly ran his fingers through the strands of my hair. "By the way, I forgot to mention that you look beautiful tonight."
Except you did:
"Kelsey, when a man spends time with a beautiful woman, he needs to pace himself."
Consistency!
Kelsey walks into her room and the chapter ends.
Closing Thoughts
So, is Ren supposed to seem like a serial killer? Because he's acting like a serial killer. What with all the talk of "I'm not letting you leave me ever" and "I can follow you everywhere because of your smell" and just...yikes.
I hate both Ren and Kelsey thoroughly at this point. They're both terrible people, and therefore they are perfect for each other.
Next time: Chapter Twenty-Four: Endings! It's the last chapter! *does a little jig of happiness* Only one more chapter and an epilogue to go!!!
Chapter Twenty-Three: Six Hours
Nothing happens in this chapter. Kelsey talks to Mr. Kadam for a while, and then Ren and Kelsey have dinner. This takes twenty-three pages (on Kindle, at least).
When they leave the staircase, it's early dawn. If we go back to see what time it was when they left Hampi a few chapters ago, it was almost dawn then, too, which means that time didn't pass outside. Which at least assuages my fears that security guards would find the magic staircase while they were down there. There is absolutely zero mention of the staircase disappearing and the statue going back to normal as they leave, which means that it's entirely possible that people will be able to find a portal to a magical pocket dimension after they leave.
I must have started walking down the wrong path because he trotted ahead, pointedly moving in a different direction. I muttered, "Show-off. I'll walk the wrong way if I want to." But, I still followed after him.
On its face, this doesn't seem to be all that bad. Sure, it shows how Kelsey is petty and annoying, but that's more of a problem with her character. Right?
Well, this shows a major problem I have with YA paranormal romance, and badly-written romance as a whole. So many protagonists are written as very strong-willed, confident women who aren't afraid to speak their mind. That's what Kelsey's doing here (or trying to, at least). Then the Designated Love Interest, a strong manly man, also very strong-willed, disagrees with the protagonist. The main character complains, but then also always goes along with whatever the love interest wants.
This happens in Twilight (Bella wants to be a vampire but Edward says no, for example). This happens in A Discovery of Witches (which I tried to get into but hated for this exact reason). This constantly happens in Tiger's Curse because Kelsey is helpless and her brain doesn't work so good.
It's like the author is paying lip service to the main character's informed trait of "confident and self-assured," and then just completely ignores that because the love interest...what? Knows better? Is superior to the main character? I have no idea.
Let your main character make a mistake! Let your main character act in a way that the love interest doesn't want! It creates better conflict between characters! Let them make wrong choices against the advice of the love interest! Or, even better, let them be right! The way these character interactions go, these characters don't have agency over what they're doing. They're constantly strong-armed into doing what they don't want to do, but it's okay because they're not happy about it while they're doing it.
I hate it.
Kelsey and Ren get back to Mr. Kadam's camp, and he's happy to see them. Instead of instantly saying, "Hey, we got the MacGuffin we were supposed to get," Kelsey starts complaining about the monkeys and kappas and needle trees. Which, yeah, I'd probably complain about those too at some point, but why wouldn't the first thing you said be that the mission was successful?
Mr. Kadam is surprised that they've been gone for a few days, and says that he was about to tell them that they could try again tomorrow. Thanks for reminding me about the lack of stakes in this story, Mr. Kadam.
Ren appeared to be sweet and attentive, as harmless as a little kitten. He was about as harmless as a Kappa.
I'll remind you all again that the butterfly metaphor that was supposed to foreshadow this was backwards, and the symbolism there was that Ren was harmless and was blending in with poisonous things as a disguise, which is the exact opposite of what is being portrayed here.
Kelsey pulls the Golden Fruit out of her backpack to show to Mr. Kadam, and repeats Ren's analysis of why it's a mango just to be obnoxious. Mr. Kadam is happy and offers to get a hotel before they drive home, which will take a couple of days. Kelsey asks for a fancy hotel far away from the jungle because she doesn't want to have to deal with Ren. She rubs it in his face for extra "bitch" points.
Kelsey's narration still refers to Ren as "my tiger" despite the fact that she doesn't like him very much right now, which doesn't make sense. He licks her face as he jumps in the car (again--tiger tongues are used to strip flesh from bones), which is not cool because he knows she's not into it. Ren sucks too.
Kelsey is so mad at Ren that when Mr. Kadam asks her to explain what happened, she lies and says that she wants to sleep instead. She does end up sleeping, so I'm not sure why that's a lie?
When she wakes up, Mr. Kadam gives her some food (a sandwich, soda, and a banana), and Kelsey immediately thinks about annoying Ren with monkey jokes because of the banana. So now, instead of only reacting to Ren, Kelsey is seeking out opportunities to be mean to him. This is our protagonist. She's somehow getting worse.
She's totally find with explaining what happened now, though, which makes the previous exchange pretty pointless. She talks for about two hours (!) and gets through describing the tree and ends with the kappa attack. She never mentions that Ren was human the whole time they were in Kishkindha, and whenever Mr. Kadam asks how something was done she credits it to the gada or Fanindra. Which isn't even lying! Fanindra did all of the hard work, helping them find where they were supposed to go and then rescuing Kelsey!
Mr. Kadam said we'd be stopping at a hotel soon, but he wanted to find a good place to leave Ren first. I demurred, "Of course," and smiled a sickly sweet smile back at the attentive tiger.
Jeez, so much. Kelsey is still being very mean for no reason. Kelsey smiles a smile back at Ren, which is terribly worded and redundant. And I think Houck is trying to use the word "demure" as a verb, because "demure" means reserved or modest. BUT, "demurred" is an entirely different word. "Demurred" means to put forward a disagreement in reservation of something. It's also a legal term that's similar to an objection. So it makes no sense to disagree with something by saying "of course." It's the wrong word, plain and simple.
Mr. Kadam says that he hopes the jungle won't be too far away from the hotel.
I patted Mr. Kadam's arm and reassured him, "Oh, don't worry about him. He's very good at getting what he wants. I mean . . . taking care of his needs."
Truer words have never been spoken.
They drop Ren off, and as they start driving away, Mr. Kadam asks Kelsey if she's alright. As someone who's not a main character, Mr. Kadam is allowed to have a functioning brain and seems to have clued into the fact that Kelsey isn't particularly thrilled with Ren at the moment.
Mr. Kadam drops the subject and asks if she's had any sort of weird dream relating to her Matt Damon amulet.
"Oh! I totally forgot to tell you! When I plucked the fruit, I fainted and had a vision. It was of you, me, and some evil guy."
Glad to see that the small amount of interaction with our antagonist is so unimportant that our protagonist completely forgot about it. Also, just the fact that our antagonist can just be summed up as "some evil guy" pains me to no end.
Mr. Kadam decides to exposit about the antagonist. We get to hear his name--Lokesh. Oh, hey, they guy from the prologue! It's not really a twist since it's pretty obvious. He is described as a "dark wizard," though, which is pretty awesome. I'm not sure if this is just a weird choice of words or if we're just now deciding to throw wizards as a class of magic-users into the book when we're a couple of chapters from the end.
We are on page 431 out of 502, at a cool 82% of the way through the story. This is completely insane pacing.
Obviously it's possible for an antagonist to physically only show up at the end of a story--that's how mysteries work, as it would be pretty dumb for an antagonist to visibly be an antagonist right at the beginning if his identity is supposed to be a surprise or a secret. The whole point is that an antagonist's actions, if not his physical presence, cast a noticeable shadow over the events of the book. The protagonist has to struggle, and that means that she has to struggle against something. In a murder mystery, the protagonist has to piece together who the antagonist is when she finds a dead body that exists because of the antagonist; she's placed into a battle of wits against a mysterious opponent that tries to keep her from finding out what happened. In a romance, the antagonist tries to keep her and her love interest apart. In an adventure story, the antagonist tries to keep the protagonist from getting to the MacGuffin.
In broad strokes, anyway.
In Harry Potter, Voldemort isn't physically present (on-screen, anyway) until the last couple of chapters/scenes in Sorcerer's Stone. But his actions influence everything that happens in the first book, even before people realize that he's still alive. His basic backstory--that he killed Lily and James, and was the leader of the bad guys in a massive wizarding war--is given in chapter 4 of Sorcerer's Stone, 50 pages into the story, at about 18% of the way through (according to Kindle). After this--and even before, to an extent--most characters' actions directly result from Voldemort as an antagonist. Harry is bullied by Snape, there's an entire subplot about the fact that one of the teachers is working for Voldemort and the main trio thinking that it's Snape, and the entire plot of the first book is Harry trying to keep Voldemort from getting the Sorcerer's Stone from Hogwarts. If no one talked about Voldemort until the very end, and Harry didn't know who he was until he talked to Dumbledore at the very end, it wouldn't make any sense!
In Sorcerer's Stone, we get a basic introduction to Voldemort and why he matters at about this point:
Where the inciting incident is Hagrid telling Harry that he's a wizard.
In Tiger's Curse, we get a similar basic introduction to Lokesh and why he matters at about this point:
Where the climax is getting the Golden Fruit and escaping from Kishkindha.
That's crazy.
"But the whole point of the book is the romance, and not the adventure, so it doesn't matter if there's an antagonist!" Incorrect. The novel has made it very clear that it's trying to be a fun adventure story in addition to a romance, or there wouldn't be nearly as many Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider action scenes, and it would be more like Twilight where nothing happens.
But anyway.
Mr. Kadam explains that there are five pieces of the amulet, and that Ren's dad had one and Ren's mom had another one. This! Is! Not! New! Information! We! Already! Know! This!
"But what does it have to do with me?"
"That's just it, Kelsey. You are helping Ren break the curse. The amulet connects the three of us, and I'm worried that Lokesh knows about us. About you, in particular. I was hoping that something had happened to him, that he wasn't alive after all these years. I've been searching for him for centuries. Now that he's seen us, I'm worried that he will come after you and the amulet."
How would something have happened to him? You already explained how the amulet works--it makes you immortal and protects you from grave danger (fat lot of good that did Kelsey when she got attacked by the kappa, so that's a plot hole!). Nothing could have happened to him.
You're telling me that you haven't found him in hundreds of years? From how he was described, he looks like a rather prominent businessman. Based on how he operates in the next book, it's not like he's keeping a low profile because he has like...a personal army.
We still don't know why he wants the amulets or why it's such a bad thing for him to get them.
Anyway, Mr. Kadam says that she'll likely be safer back in America, and that they'll need to be careful in the future now that Lokesh is back.
Kelsey immediately starts thinking that she should go home, not because she's unsafe but because she won't be near Ren.
They pull into a five-star hotel and Kelsey feels out of place in her dirty, bloody (!) clothing. No one thinks this is out of the ordinary, somehow. Of course, Mr. Kadam reserves the penthouse suite for Kelsey because he is fabulously rich despite us not really knowing the source of his money.
Kelsey takes a show to clean herself off, and then takes a bubble bath in the huge tub to relax after spending a week camping/almost dying. I don't have any complaints about this because I would do literally the exact same thing. There's a nice bit where the way the bubbles smell reminds her of Oregon, which makes sense because she was just thinking about home.
She says that the bath is the best feeling in the world, and then immediately amends this by saying it's the second best after she starts thinking about Ren kissing her. She thinks about him kissing her for two whole paragraphs.
She meets back up with Mr. Kadam, who says that dinner had been delivered (it's turkey, cornbread stuffing, cranberry relish, peas, mashed potatoes, and apple pie, because America). Mr. Kadam says that he thought she might appreciate some American cuisine after so long.
As she eats dinner, she apologizes for not telling him the whole story before, and lets him know that Ren was human the whole time they were in Kishkindha, which she feels more comfortable talking about now that Ren's not here with them. She says that things didn't go very smoothly over the few days they spent together, and Mr. Kadam finally understands why she was acting strangely after they got back.
"Ren can be . . . difficult at times."
No shit, Mr. Kadam.
Mr. Kadam comforts Kelsey by saying that they're working on a difficult and dangerous quest and also still getting to know each other, so it's not that surprising that they'd argue a bit. He advises her that this is okay and that it's just a temporary thing. This is decent advice, I think, provided that Ren isn't throwing himself at Kelsey and making her uncomfortable. Oh wait, that's exactly what's happening.
Kelsey unwraps the Golden Fruit from the quilt in her backpack and sets it out to be laundered, placing the Golden Fruit...well, somewhere. You'd think they'd want to take good care of it considering the Big Bad has made an appearance, but, well, whatever.
The next morning, Kelsey meets Mr. Kadam for breakfast (hash browns, toast, and omelettes). She packs up her clothes and newly-laundered quilt, the Golden Fruit, the gada, and Fanindra in her backpack, taking care to leave the backpack slightly unzipped in case Fanindra needs to breathe. Which, again, is a nice touch!
Is it sad that there's been more positive interaction between Kelsey and her jewelry than Kelsey and her love interest?
They drive back to where they dropped off Ren, and Kelsey stays in the car so she doesn't have to deal with him. Ren says something to him, and Mr. Kadam laughs and claps him on the back. What could it mean??
Kelsey ignores Ren as they drive all day, and Mr. Kadam says that they have one more hotel stop before they get back to Ren's jungle mansion. He says that they'll have dinner at a restaurant that night, and leaves Kelsey to relax. As she stresses out about what to wear to dinner, a maid knocks on the door and gives her a box that she says is from Mr. Kadam.
There's a dress inside! Dress porn!
The fitted black velvet bodice had a sweetheart neckline, and the capped sleeves and skirt were made of a pearlescent plum dupioni silk. The dress's snug fit made me look curvier than I really was. It tapered down to my hips and settled over the full plum, knee-length skirt. A belt, made of the same material as the skirt, and was knotted on the side and pinned with a sparkling broach to emphasize the size of my waist.
That should be "brooch," not "broach," by the way. Two editors. Ugh.
Kelsey finishes getting ready until Mr. Kadam shows up, and says that she looks beautiful. They walk to the restaurant for dinner, but all of the tables are empty except for one. I wonder who it could be??
Mr. Kadam bows to Kelsey and says that he's leaving her alone to eat with her dining companion.
Dining companion? What is he talking about? Maybe he's confused.
Oh, Kelsey's poor brain. It's doing its best.
Yeah, it's obvious who it is. Ren's sitting at the table.
He was dressed in an elegant black suit and he'd had his hair cut. Glossy black hair was swept back away from his face in tousled layers that tapered to a slight curl at the nape of his neck. The white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the collar. It set off his golden-bronze skin and his brilliant white smile, making him positively lethal to any woman who might cross his path.
He's hawt.
He checks her out over the course of a couple of paragraphs (although we are spared a description of him staring at her boobs, which does unquestionably happen).
Kelsey asks if he's about done yet, and Ren is annoying.
His eyes drifted leisurely back up to my face and he smiled at me appreciatively, "Kelsey, when a man spends time with a beautiful woman, he needs to pace himself."
I quirked my eyebrow at him and laughed. "Yeah. I'm a regular marathon, alright."
What does that even mean.
He kissed my fingers. "Exactly. A wise man never sprints . . . in a marathon."
Um, you sprint at the end. That's the point. You conserve energy during the run so you can go all-out at the end. Also, why are there ellipses? They don't really do anything, and I'm not sure if the joke is about the "not sprinting" part or the "in a marathon" part.
"I was being sarcastic, Ren."
Thanks for pointing that out I didn't notice that you were being sarcastic when you were clearly being sarcastic, I'm just an idiotic reader who doesn't pick up on obvious context clues.
He pulls out a chair for her, and she thinks about running away. This is not a great interaction between your love interests at the end of the book.
He leaned in close and whispered in my ear, "I know what you're thinking, and I'm not going to let you escape again. You can either take a seat and have dinner with me like a normal date," he grinned at his word choice, "or," he paused thoughtfully then threatened, "you can sit on my lap while I force-feed you."
OOF that grammar. All capitalization and commas appear exactly how they do in the Kindle version (and the physical copy as well, I think), and they are not good. You can't grin a sentence, which means that "date" should be followed by a period or a dash to indicate that the dialogue is being broken up with an action. Same with "he paused thoughtfully," as you can't pause the word "or." There should be a comma after the word "thoughtfully." Since "pause" isn't a dialogue tag, but an action, the word "you" should also be capitalized.
Two editors.
Also, yikes, Ren is scary.
I hissed, "You wouldn't dare. You're too much of a gentleman to force me to do anything. It's an empty bluff, Mr. Asks-For-Permission."
Um, HELLO? Literally, in the last chapter, when he kissed you when he very much did not have your permission? I complained a lot about it!
I unceremoniously plunked down in my chair and scooted noisily to the table.
I actually like this, since it does a good job of showing that Kelsey is unwillingly going along with things but isn't happy about it without telling us outright over and over again.
The waitress shows up and blatantly flirts with Ren, which makes Kelsey annoyed. Dude, you have to pick a side. Either you are into Ren and are jealous when other girls interact with him, or you are deciding not to be into him, in which case you have no right to be annoyed when he acts romantically with other people. Now, it could work if she felt guilty for feeling jealous, as that kind of inner conflict would actually make sense, but it just comes off as really hypocritical.
Ren orders food and Kelsey says that he'd better hurry up since his time is almost up. He doesn't seem too worried about it.
"Fine. No skin off my nose. I can't wait to see what happens when a white tiger runs through this nice establishment creating mayhem and havoc. Perhaps they will lose one of their stars because they put their patrons in danger. Maybe your new waitress girlfriend will run away screaming." I smiled at the thought.
BEEP BOOP I TALK LIKE REAL HU-MAN
Ren winks at the waitress to be obnoxious.
When Kelsey mentions again that he's running out of time, he says that they don't have to worry about it. Turns out that by fulfilling the first part of Durga's prophecy, they lifted the curse. Well, part of it, since now he can be human for six hours out of the day, versus the twenty-four minutes he was stuck with before.
Kelsey says that it makes sense--there were four sides to the obelisk that has Durga's prophecy was written on, and four times six is twenty-four.
Uhh, so why did he have twenty-four minutes before, though? This doesn't explain that.
Kelsey says that she probably isn't necessary for the other tasks, since Ren and Kishan can probably take care of the others now that they're humans for more of the day.
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at me. "Don't underestimate your level of . . . involvement, Kelsey. Even if you weren't needed anymore to break the curse, do you think I'd simply let you go? Let you walk out of my life without a backward glance?"
Hi, that's called kidnapping. Oh, wait, that's how she got here in the first place.
This book is troubling.
"The answer to that question is . . . I won't. You belong with me. Which leads me to the discussion I wanted to have with you."
"Where I belong is for me to decide, and though I will listen to what you have to say, that doesn't mean I will agree with you."
"Fair enough." Ren pushed his empty plate to the side. "We have some unfinished business to take care of."
Fair enough? Fair enough? I hate Ren.
Kelsey thinks that Ren is talking about the other tasks they have to complete (lol no, that's for the next book, Kelsey), but Ren wants to talk about their relationship. Now you're making me side with the creep, Kelsey, thanks.
There's some back and forth for an entire page of Ren telling Kelsey that she has feelings for him, while Kelsey denies it. The waitress comes back and Ren gives her his card to pay for dinner. He says something to her, and she giggles.
When she left, I narrowed my eyes at him and asked, "How did you get that card, and what were you saying to her about me?"
"Mr. Kadam gave me the card, and I told her that we would be having our dessert . . . later."
I laughed facetiously. "You mean you will be having dessert later by yourself this evening because I am done eating with you."
He leaned across the table and said, "Who said anything about eating, Kelsey?"
O_O
I get that this is a YA book, but this is a just-not-quite explicit reference to sex in a novel where the most extreme curse word is "gads" and where the most romantically-charged thing is kissing.
He physically drags her back to their hotel (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and he leaves her at the door to her room. He says that he has a room on the same floor.
He whispered warmly, "I can always tell where you are, Kelsey. You smell like peaches and cream."
RUN AWAY!!!!
He kisses her again, and it lasts another page.
With a devastating smile, he reluctantly pulled away and lightly ran his fingers through the strands of my hair. "By the way, I forgot to mention that you look beautiful tonight."
Except you did:
"Kelsey, when a man spends time with a beautiful woman, he needs to pace himself."
Consistency!
Kelsey walks into her room and the chapter ends.
Closing Thoughts
So, is Ren supposed to seem like a serial killer? Because he's acting like a serial killer. What with all the talk of "I'm not letting you leave me ever" and "I can follow you everywhere because of your smell" and just...yikes.
I hate both Ren and Kelsey thoroughly at this point. They're both terrible people, and therefore they are perfect for each other.
Next time: Chapter Twenty-Four: Endings! It's the last chapter! *does a little jig of happiness* Only one more chapter and an epilogue to go!!!
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